When we have politicians like this, is it any wonder we’re in a mess?

There’s an old saying that people get the politicians they deserve. If true, one has to wonder what we’ve done to deserve our rabid Brexit supporters because, as another old saying goes – karma’s a bitch!

Take the impossibly coiffured and relentless self-publicist Michael Fabricant, the MP for Lichfield as an example. In the recent Hs2 phase 2a bill second reading he opposed Hs2 on several grounds, one of which was that it “fails to connect via HS2 Phase 1 with HS1, the Channel Tunnel and the European continent”

Really? This piss-poor excuse from a self confessed “ferocious Brexiteer” and fan of blue passports simply doesn’t wash because Brexit will help to make such a line even more uneconomic than it is now! The business case is already weak because we’re outside the Schengen agreement area for free movement so anyone who travels on the existing Eurostar service from St Pancras already has to go through passport control (and potentially, customs checks). If trains to Europe ran from Manchester or Leeds and stopped en-route, how many places would need border security outposts and customs checks – especially now as his Government are insisting that we are leaving the customs union as well as the single market? The logistics and costs of such an operation are already difficult, after the ‘hard’ Brexit Fabricant backs they’d be far worse.

How does an MP who insists we ‘take back control’ of our borders propose this will work? Of course the simple answer is – he hasn’t got a clue. Like most Brexit supporters he’s never stopped to think beyond the rhetoric and this, my friends is why this country is deeply, deeply screwed. The ideologues are in charge now and they don’t do detail – or common-sense. But they do a fantastic line in hypocrisy and delusion.